#2017 phan

“What’cha thinkin’ about?” His voice is only a few feet away; we’re sat outside in his backyard, and night’s fallen. I’m curled up in the metal chair, knees at my chin, staring up at the stars.

“You,” I smile, eyes still turned skyward.

“That’s so cheesy,” he laughs, finding my hand in the soft darkness surrounding us. There’s a porch light on, but it barely casts a glow far enough out to reach us. Once his fingers have entwined with mine, I squeeze gently.

“Yeah, well it’s supposed to be cheesy,” I laugh alongside him; we’re sat in separate chairs, but the cool evenings of October have set in, and my thin jumper isn’t doing much to protect me from the icy metal - I can’t suppress my shiver, and Phil glances over.

“Should we go inside?” I shake my head in response, fighting the cold.

“No, I want to stay under the stars a little longer,” I protest, letting a slight whine slip into my voice. He tugs our joined hands, and it takes me less than a second to realize what he wants. How do we know each other so well already? I stand, grimacing slightly when my socks absorb a little of the moisture from the grass, then sigh contentedly the moment I settle into Phil’s lap. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me to his chest - he’s far more comfortable than the metal chair. And far warmer.

I don’t think, just lean into him and press a kiss to his cheek. It’s tame, given everything the camera caught earlier, but it still sends a flash of warmth through my core. This is real. I can’t even believe this, but it’s real, and I’m here, and we’re...I don’t finish the thought, though, because Phil’s turned his head and his lips replace his cheek and the kiss is lazy but full of...yeah, love. I might be a stupid teenager, we may not have known each other all that long, I may have only just met him in person, but something this right can’t be anything but love.

A smile tugs at my cheeks, and Phil must notice - to be fair, I can’t really stop it.

“What now?” He’s smiling as well, something between a smirk and his genuine, truly happy smile.

“I must be dreaming,” I whisper it, because really, how could I get so lucky? How is this really happening? His face breaks into a full grin and he leans in to recapture my lips.

-------------------------------------------------

“Phil!” I shout across the apartment - I’ve no clue if he’s downstairs or in the other room, but apparently something happened on his liveshow today while I was out.

“Yeah?” I hear it from downstairs, echoing across the walls and up to the lounge. Moments later, his black fringe appears. “What’s up?”

“Before I dive too deep into tumblr, what happened on your liveshow today?” I’m trying to sound...well, not calm, but controlled at least. Don’t get me wrong, I love dropping hints about us being together, but I’m worried whatever happened has taken it to a whole other level - I’ve barely pulled up the website and the first thing I saw was the word ‘married’. Fuck, I hope I’m dreaming.

“Oh, uhm…” he looks away, and I’m very strongly reminded of the time he ate all the marshmallows for the baking video a few years ago. And the last time I caught him eating my cereal. And pretty much any time he’s done something he knows I might be annoyed with.

“Phil, what happened?” I definitely sound anything but calm at this point. We’ve discussed time and time again how - and if - we would tell our audience, and we certainly didn’t agree on it being when he was home alone during a liveshow.

“I, uhm, may have...okay, look,” he climbs the rest of the stairs, plopping down next to me on the sofa. I don’t protest when he grabs my laptop, but there’s a sinking feeling in my gut - I absolutely trust him, but I’m worried what kind of mess we might have to dig ourselves out of this time.

After a minute, he shows me the screen - it’s his liveshow, which I haven’t yet had the chance to watch - and hits play most of the way through it. I listen in silence.

“So, I mean, I didn’t say anything, but…” he pauses as soon as he’s played the portion of the video. “But I didn’t exactly say anything,” he twists his lips at me, trying to read my reaction. I’m not even sure how to react - he didn’t say anything, true enough, but he didn’t deny what was said, either.

“Well…” I start, still hesitant. He’s watching me closely, and looks incredibly concerned I’ll be upset. “You didn’t say anything,” I don’t miss the sigh of relief he lets out. “It’s just more for the fans to speculate about at this point,” I’m not thrilled that it happened that way, but at least it wasn’t an outright admission. That...well, that would’ve been tough. I want to be there, I want us to be together, if we ever decide to go public. He knows that.

“I’m so sorry!” I barely have time to set the laptop aside before he’s tackled me to the couch in a hug, and I smile in spite of myself. Eight years and he hasn’t changed a bit.

“Phil, it’s fine, really,” I wrap my arms around him, laughing when his breath tickles my neck. “Come on, we’ve got a video to-” my protest dies in my throat when his lips meet the exact spot his breath had hit a moment ago, and I exhale sharply. “Phil…” I make a final - albeit breathy - attempt to get him on task, but shudder involuntarily when he works his way up to my mouth.

It was a crisp, and colorless day late in the month of October of 2009.

However, this dreary day was felt by neither Dan or Phil. As today, would be the first day that they meet after months of long late-night Skype conversations, and daily online interactions.

Dan, a night owl, had woken up unusually early in the excitement of meeting the guy he had watched on YouTube for years; a guy he somehow managed to grab the attention of, and happened to have a multitude of shared interests. In the midst of straightening his hair, even though Phil had been one of the few people to see his unruly hobbit hair, Dan wondered if Phil could be his soulmate.

Now Dan was not a hopeless romantic, like his colleagues that would try to meet anyone and everyone they could to see if they shared that telepathic connection that was attributed to soulmates. In fact, Dan was not even actively looking for his soulmate, as he secretly hoped Phil was his ever since he stumbled across his YouTube channel in 2006. He knew it was a whimsical thought, as far as his family and Christian grandmother knew, Dan was as straight as his crispy fringe, after 2 hours of hopelessly trying to flat iron he ringlets away. Sure, Dan had dated a couple of girls, and went to parties, but he never connected with anyone. He had never had a bestfriend. And he hoped that with Phil he could find some solace, and that in return, he could be the same for Phil as he boarded the earliest train from Reading to Manchester that cold, October morning.

Phil Lester did not sleep a wink the night before Dan was due to arrive in Manchester. He knew he shouldn’t have drank that coffee at nine o’clock in the evening, but he had to tidy everything for it to be just perfect for Dan.

Phil had grown up in a very loving family, and had had a lot of close friends - many of which had paired off with their respective soulmates, and this left Phil to feel quite alone despite be surrounded by his family and friends. Phil always wondered whether his soulmate would be male or female, he didn’t care either way as all that mattered was how well he got on with them, and a part of him secretly wished for it to be Dan. Of course, he wouldn’t know until he meet Dan in person as the telepathic connection is strongest when in close contact with your soulmate, otherwise you get radio silence or hushed whispers. Once Phil was satisfied with how tidy he had got his bedroom, for probably the first time ever since he had returned from university, he set off for the train station to meet Dan.

When Dan’s train finally arrived at the station in Manchester, both him and Phil had ceased breathing, it wasn’t until their eyes met - as the pair of them towered over the majority of the passengers at the station - that both of them exhaled. They recognized each other immediately, and greeted each other with a tight hug.

‘I can’t believe you’re real.’

Neither of them were aware that they were soulmates, as they had mutually thought this.

~ ~ ~

Dan and Phil were riding the high of an emotional rollercoaster, in complete bliss that the other person was actually real and not just some pixelated and blurry figure over Skype. They sat in Phil’s bedroom, going over the video that they had planned to film after returning from their first day out.

Dan was fairly new to YouTube, and Phil was his number one fan - telling him that his ideas were amazing and complimenting how well-spoken and articulate he came across in all his videos.

Phil had suggested a Q&A, and both were sat against Phil’s bed writing down questions from Twitter on a notepad. Dan was leant against Phil, still in shock from the warmth of his body - that this boy, whom he had admired and connected with was real.

…

They had been filming, what they called “Phil is not on Fire” for hours now. They were working out how they should close out the video, Dan and Phil lying on the floor of Phil’s bedroom, when a thought struck both of them:

‘This is the most fun I’ve ever had.’

“You got anything?” Phil asked, going back and forth between a few ideas in his head.

Dan nodded, and the pair sat up to film the ending of the video. Phil waits for Dan to go ahead, as he plans on surprise-tackling Dan, half listening as Dan speaks, “This is the most fun I’ve ever had.”

Dan lets out a quiet yelp when Phil tackles him to the floor, and recovers from the hug with a soft laugh, “What was that for?”

Phil shrugs his shoulders, distancing himself a bit, “I just wanted to hug you, I still can’t believe you’re a real person.”

“I know. I wish I could stay here longer,” Dan says wistfully.

“I think it’s funny that you said ‘this is the most fun I’ve ever had’ as I was going to say the same thing,” Phil chuckles a bit, not realizing.

Dan’s heart nearly jumps out of his throat, but he realizes it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, he’s been with Phil for a bit now and surely they would have noticed if they were soulmates by now.

~ ~ ~

It was early in the autumn of 2012, the warmth of summer beginning to fade much to Dan and Phil’s enjoyment as their new London apartment did not have any air conditioning.

The pair had been through a lot since that initial meeting in 2009. They moved into a second apartment together, they started their own radio show with BBC Radio 1, and the were constantly bouncing new ideas off each other. However, the one stone that remained unturned was soulmates.

Since 2011, when Dan had been living with Phil for a couple of months, his family began to interrogate him. Dan knew they meant well, they had wanted him to settle down and be able to fit in with society. This weighed on Dan’s mind until one day he snapped.

On this morning, the first thing Dan did was confront Phil in the lounge. Dan, the flatmate who usually did not leave his room until half past 1 in the afternoon, was out at 11 in the morning, as soon as he had heard Phil walking around. “Up early, yeah?” Phil asked, his face partially in a bowl of Dan’s cereal.

“Phil-we-need-to-discuss-something-that-had-been-on-my-mind-for-awhile-and-I-can’t-keep-it-in-but-every-time-I-work-up-the-courage-to-put-it-out-there-I-get-nervous-and-procrastinate- and-I-don’t want to make you unhappy,” Dan slowed down as he ran out of breath.

“Dan, you know I’ll always listen to you, what’s on your mind?” Phil immediately placed his, well Dan’s, cereal on the coffee table and looked up at him with those blue, green, yellow eyes that Dan was particularly fond of, even if he didn’t want to admit it to anyone.

Dan let out a long sigh and half sat-leaned on the table behind him. “My family, mainly my grandma, was getting on my case about my soulmate…”

“And?” Phil urged him to continue as Dan seemed to trail off.

“I feel a lot like I keep you from actively searching from your soulmate, and it’s not right of me-”

“Dan, how did this become about me?”

Dan keep his eyes low to the ground to desperately avoid any embarrassing eye contact, even though it was just Phil, the Phil he knew would understand if he could just spit out the truth. Instead, Dan began to backpedal, “Well, I don’t particularly care about finding my soulmate, but I don’t want to deter you from it. As you seemed a bit down when Martyn found Cornelia last year, and I just want you to be happy and not get in the way of that…”

“Dan,” Phil said, and then closed his mouth in a tight line.

Now Dan looked up, only to be engulfed in a hug by Phil. This wasn’t one of their usually hugs, this was more like a hug you would receive from a distant relative where it’s not warm and it ends before it even begins.

“Dan,” Phil starts again. “I will try to put myself out there more. But I think it is only fair if you go out and look for your soulmate to, it’s not fair to them or me.”

Dan let out a huff of air he hadn’t realized he had been holding in, and muttered, “Okay, we’ll hit the club tonight.”

Phil couldn’t hold in his chuckle, “Hit the club? Dan, what are you, my dad?”

“This is going to suck.”

And yet again, the boys who were so in sync failed to notice the telepathic soulmate connect they shared.

~ ~ ~

Needless to say, 2012 was a fairly rough year. To make matters worse, the popularity of their ship “Phan” had made it an obstacle for them to go out and actually date people - both of the boys feared getting close to anyone, mainly women, that might google search them and find out either of them was in a gay ship. Although not “out”, both Dan and Phil did not have a specific gender preference, as most of society, because when soulmates are linked telepathically, it doesn’t matter who loves who. The deep connection was the only vital requirement.

And Dan and Phil failed to find anyone that they individually shared a connection with. In fact, it was such a flop, that by the summer of 2013 they mutually agreed to put it off for an indefinite amount of time.

~ ~ ~

In early September of 2014, Dan and Phil were sat in the lounge - they had gotten in this rhythm of waking up at a semi-reasonable time to eat cereal and watch anime together. After a couple episodes, they would just sit in comfortable silence, slowly waking up. Sometimes they would talk, bouncing video ideas off each other.

Today a particularly brilliant idea struck both of them, maybe only one of them had initially thought of it, but it got both of them excited: ‘We should make a gaming channel!’

“I’ve had a really good idea!” They bursted out in unison. They immediately looked at each other and laughed.

“Well that was unusual,” Dan mused, nervously fixing his fringe. Dan had toyed around with the possibility that him and Phil were soulmates for a couple years, but after they have tried to connect with other people, he had resolved to just being alone forever.

“Alright, well I’ve got a really good idea,” Phil is bouncing with excitement.

“How about we say it aloud at the same time?” Dan suggests, not really expecting anything.

“Alright,” Phil nods. “Three… two...one…”

“A GAMING CHANNEL! It’ll be per-” Both of the boys stop.

Dan feels like the wind has been knocked out of him, and he has completely stopped breathing. Is he having a panic attack?

Phil, on the other hand, is a bit slower. It just now dawns on him that him and Dan have this uncanny ability of being on the same page with one another in most instances. He feels excitement like a bunch of wild moths fluttering in stomach. The boy he had always hoped was his soulmate; the one he had gotten to see grow as a creator, and have all these amazing work opportunities with; the guy who he had lived in two apartments with, and comforted when university had not been agreeing with him. To Phil, this was almost too good to be true.

As his mind fluttered back to reality, he noticed Dan’s face was emotionless, yet tears were streaming out of his eyes and he was letting out short panicked breaths. Phil remembered this Dan - this was the Dan he has seen in 2012 when he was on the fence about dropping out of his law degree.

Phil carefully, wrapped an arm around Dan’s tense shoulders and gently rubbed circles on Dan’s arm. “Hey Dan, can you breath slowly for me, come on, exhale…. And inhale… exhale… and inhale…”

Phil was careful as he pressed his lips gingerly to Dan’s temple, he didn’t want to do anything that would make Dan more panicked.

Dan exhaled one more shaky breath, and avoided looking at Phil’s face with the two bright blue eyes he knew so well, with the rings of green and gold that always lit up when they would play videogames together or when they would talk to each other on Friday nights over movies they had seen a million times.

“Phil, I’ve known… I’ve known since we ended the first Phil is not on Fire… Why didn’t I say anything?” Dan keep his eyes down, they were puffy from the tears still leaking from his eyes.

Phil continued to methodically rub circles in Dan’s arm, “What do you mean, you’ve known?”

Dan’s eyes flick up, and he’s shocked to see how striking Phil’s eyes look in this moment - so intent and focused on him like he is the most important thing in his life. He nearly forgets to breath, but his burning lungs remind him to inhale, “This is the happiest I’ve ever been.”

‘I’m such an idiot.’

“You’re not an idiot,” They both say. Phil does that cheeky grin with his tongue half-sticking out between his teeth, and Dan lets out another shaky breath.

“I am,” Phil continues. “I should have know, but I have always felt so comfortable with you that I never thought of reading into us that much - I’ve just enjoyed you and now I feel so dumb about trying to find someone who wasn’t you.”

“Well I feel dumb because I should have known you won’t have kicked me out on the streets if I simply just told you.”

“Dan,” Phil now pulls Dan into a proper hug, “You and I both know I’d never go anywhere without you, except maybe the toilet, and when I go to have those game nights with Samara from the “Ring” every Tuesday night.”

“Shut up,” Dan releases the tension in his shoulders and grins.

“So what does this mean?” They say in unison. “Okay we have to-”

“Stop.”

“Stop,” Phil does another cheeky grin with the half stuck out tongue.

“Well, what are we comfortable with?” Dan ponders, he’s talking into Phil’s neck, still enjoying the embrace.

Phil doesn’t bother to pull away, “I mean you’ll always be my best friend, but we can just see what comes naturally. If we progress into anything it should be because we want to not because we’re soulmates.”

Dan nods in agreement, “But you know what we should do?”

“Get songs stuck in each other’s heads at horribly inconvenient times?” Phil finally releases Dan to playfully nudge his arm.

“You spork, I was going to say, queue up some games to kick off our new channel. Plus, we have to pick out a channel name… how do you feel about ‘TheGame’?”

~ ~ ~

‘DanAndPhilGAMES’ had been an utter success. In the past 3 years, Dan and Phil had done so many wonderful projects together: they wrote two books; made and performed their stage show, TATINOF, around the world; were featured in a couple of Disney movies; and there was so more more the pair had accomplished. Not even mentioning that they had moved out of their old London flat, and into a new, larger home still in their city, London.

They became quite close, they were not together, in the traditional sense of the word, but they weren’t strictly platonic. For example, Dan and Phil shared a bed most nights. In their old flat, it started out as a ‘Hey want to watch a movie and fall asleep in bed’ or a “Hey let’s work on the book until we fall asleep”. These were mainly excuses because the pair was so used to their own distinct spaces and bedrooms that it was a tad odd for them to simply abandon their old bed.

However, in the new apartment, it was Phil’s idea to actually share a bedroom. As they wanted more space for their gaming channel room, and as a result the room were Phil’s ‘room’ was located was not exactly fit for an over six foot tall adult man. To be honest, it could barely fit the bed, his camera, and both him and Dan when they did collab videos. It is a wonder how they will be able to film the next PINOF without horribly bruising their knees from hitting the furniture.

It was an unusually chilly July evening as Dan and Phil sat on top of their shared bed, their legs had become tangled and Phil mused, “I like this.”

He didn’t need to clarify Dan knew exactly what he was referencing as his face lit up revealing his dimples, “Me too.”

~ ~ ~

Come August, it was now time for something Dan and Phil had been nervously excited about - livestreaming a game for ‘DanAndPhilGAMES’. They knew the Phans would go crazy, but at this point, neither of them were as phased as they had been in 2011 and 2012. They were both aware one of them might slip up. Both of them knew it would probably be Phil as he can barely keep a secret to save his life, but nonetheless, Dan and Phil prepared for their first ever gaming livestream fairly excited to see how it turned out.

“Hello DanAndPhil doglegs!” Phil chirps.

“Excuse me?”

Phil glances at Dan who is biting in his cheek to hold in a laugh, “I did some late night wiki searching on golf courses and apparently, holes that bend to the left or right of the ‘teeing area’ are called a dogleg.”

“Alright then. And welcome to Golf with Friends!” Dan rolls his eyes and playfully nudges his foot into Phil’s calf below the camera.

…

About 30 minutes into the livestream, Dan and Phil were a couple rounds in. The current one being a corridor with a curly ramp.

“Oh, it’s curly like your hair,” Phil remarked taking one of Dan’s curls and Dan tried to focus on putting. He softly hear Dan laugh out loud, followed by a, ‘Phil, remember, we can’t edit anything out, as this is a livestream.’

Phil actually laughed out loud as he proceed to take his turn.

Dan responded and messed some of Phil’s fringe, “Ah, we should’ve curled your hair for this livestream Phil, it would have gone so well with this course’s aesthetic.”

“Hey, quit distracting me, cheaters never win, Daniel!”

“Well Philly, this cheater happens to be beating you by 4 strokes,” Dan’s amber eyes were so bright as Phil looked up and couldn’t formulate any response. He was at a complete loss for words. And Dan’s smirk followed by, ‘Cat got your tongue, Philly?’ was beginning to rile Phil up.

…

About another hour later, and they finally finished the course and ended the livestream.

“Dan,” Phil was still sat on the couch in the gaming room as Dan put the irritating golf hats away in the wall cabinet. He was struggling to not share his thoughts with Dan at the moment as he was hoping to catch him off guard.

“Yeah?”

“Remember how we said we would let things come naturally?”

“Yeah,” Dan said again taking a seat on the couch with Phil, but this time he had felt his heart skip a beat.

“Would it be alright if I kissed you?” Phil looked to Dan’s face for approval. “Naturally, I mean,” He tacked on with that cheeky grin, poking out a bit of his tongue.

‘Yes.’

Both of them leaned in, but it was Phil who initiated the kiss, closing the gap and pressing his chapped pink lips to Dan’s rosy ones. Neither of them had kissed anyone properly in years, but this felt so natural and comfortable. The first one was a peck, testing the waters to see if they truly were comfortable doing this - after all, they had been best friends for eight years. The second one was a bit more intense, as Dan initiated it, pulling Phil closer and their hands began to move on their own accord. Phil had one hand in Dan’s curly hair that he loved so much, the other carefully placed on Dan’s waist; while one of Dan’s hands gripped the collar of Phil’s shirt as if to hold him there so he’d never leave, and the other was loosely hanging around Phil’s shoulder.

They took a moment to breathe, resting their foreheads together, lightly panting, and looking into each other’s eyes, ‘This is the most fun I’ve ever had.’